Seizure
by grey-eyed-goddess
Summary: He thought he was alone the first time he did it in the office.


**Title**: Seizure  
**Rating**: K  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine by a long shot.  
**Characters**: Spencer Reid and a bit of Morgan, Elle and Gideon.  
**Spoilers**: None (unless you don't know about Reid's memory abilities).  
**Author's** **Note**: I've tried to post this so many times...Curse you my computer. Here it is. My first Criminal Minds fic. It'll also be on my account under greyeyedgoddess. I got the idea from a series of books Carol O'Connel who writes about a Dr. Charles Butler who is much like Reid (exactly like Reid). In the first novel Charles tells the story of how his cleaning lady thought he was having a seizure when he was reading the pages of a book in his mind which is how his memory works.

**Seizure**

He thought that he was alone the first time he did it in the office. The rooms were silent and still, and the ceiling was making a dark mockery of the night sky as he opened his eyes towards the sky. Pushing his way through the fog of sleep, his finger fumble with the metal switch of the lamp as he wills his body to obey his mind's drowsy commands. The darkness is pressing in upon him, and the continuous blinking of his eyes only serves to irritate his contacts as he waits for his fingers to obey the silent command of his mind to turn on his lamp. It is only when the lamp light blinds him that he slides back into his chair sighing and running a hand through his hair. The sleep has fled with the darkness, and he wonders again if it the sleep that always slows him down or the darkness. Either way he is alone, the building is silent, and any movement beyond his ring of light is only his sleepy delusions.

He knew this would happen.

They had forgotten him. In their hurry to leave their eyes had glazed and passed over his slumped over sleeping form as they struggled to rid themselves of the case. One by one they had muttered good-byes and good wishes to each other before escaping to the comfort of their beds while he had slipped deeper into sleep atop his filed covered desk. No one had bothered to wake him. In his mind he could see them fleeing the office to their safe havens. They had ceased to realize his existence when his talking had ended-when the case had ended. He was new, and he had expected it. When the plane had landed and the folders had closed with the last scratchings of a pen he had ceased to be important to them, and so their eyes had chosen what to see.

He was resigned to this.

His safe haven beckoned him though. The ceiling, unmarked by lights or tiles that were too obvious or damaging to the clearness, swam before his eyes in a sea of white paper, and Spencer Reid gave in to it. He allowed his arms to fall across his chest and his head to lean back as his eyes focused on the pure white above him. In his mind he called up the long ago picture of two pages, and the edges of his vision blurred as the shadows inched their way into his line of sight. They came together, twisted and began to form the words that were so familiar to him yet on the tip of his tongue. The lines of text formed, focused, and it was then that Doctor Spencer Reid began to read.

_"...Sensitivity to detail that did not occur in the original folktale, the psychoanalyst takes us into a mental universe that never existed..."_Left to right, left to right-the mantra of his eyes played over and over again as he moved from line to line. He turned a page, the words twisted and untwisted, and they formed again in new two pages of text. Again and again his eyes moved over the words as he lost himself in the text and tried to push aside the idea of his own forgetting. He had created his own safe haven long ago.

_"...for psychoanalyst need not be more rigid than poets in their manipulation of symbols-but rather from blindness to the historical dimension..."_It was why he did not hear the footsteps or voices as Morgan and Elle returned. No one had ever come back for him, and he expected no such returns after all these years. It was a mistake he had never expected to come across.

"Elle! Grab his head!"

"Morgan, what the hell is wrong with his?"

"His eyes! Seizure!"

It was only when he felt the cold touch of flesh on his cheeks and neck that his words vanished and his eyes stopped their mantra. His body was frozen for the first second as he tried to understand where they had come from, and his body was jerked forward by instinct in the following second.

"What the hell man?" His arms were bent at the elbows, but facing up in some form of surrender as he pressed his lower back into the desk. The other two stared at him from spots behind his chair and beside his lamp. His eyes searched for some answer in their eyes until they all turned towards a familiar voice.

"He was reading. It wasn't a seizure." Gideon eyed the three of them. "Dr. Reid, tomorrow I believe you should brief the team on your specific talents involving memory and reading. It might make these occurrences less frequent."

Morgan cocked one eyebrow. "Reading?"

"Can I explain it tomorrow? I just...I'm going to go home now."

"Sure kid." Elle glanced towards the man smirking beside her. Their eyes followed the retreating back of the Doctor until the elevator doors closed behind him.

Behind the doors Spencer Reid sighed and his lips curled in upon each other as he starred at the closed doors as though they were going to give him an answer. He spoke to the empty air slowly and unsure of his words.

"They...didn't forget me?"


End file.
